New Orleans jazz landmarks on Rampart Street scrawled with graffiti

Local jazz buffs and preservationists have spent years seeking ways to protect and redevelop a collection of vacant and unimpressive-looking buildings in the 400 block of South Rampart Street that played important roles in the early history of jazz in New Orleans. Now they have a new problem to contend with: giant graffiti that appeared this week on two of the buildings.

403 Forbidden

403 Forbidden

The largest markings, reading "ERASE NORTH," cover the second-floor side wall of a former theater where a young Louis Armstrong once won a talent contest.

Longtime graffiti fighter Fred Radtke said Thursday that he recognizes some of the spray-painted markings as the work of the same vandals who have defaced other some Business District buildings.

He said the vandals used a pressurized container like a fire extinguisher to spray the letters high on the wall, above the roof of an adjoining pizza restaurant.

Radtke's Operation Clean Sweep is offering a $100 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved.

He said he cannot paint over or remove the graffiti without permission from the owners.

The buildings on the lake side of the 400 block of South Rampart might look architecturally undistinguished, but four of them are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and have been declared local historic landmarks.

"There is probably no other block in America with buildings bearing so much significance to the history of our country's great art form, jazz," John Hasse, curator of American music at the Smithsonian Institution, said last year. "It would be a terrible shame if these structures were allowed to disintegrate. They hold the potential to tell remarkable stories about the culture of New Orleans and the music of America."

Yet the buildings are mostly decrepit and vacant and have been threatened with demolition.

At 401-03 S. Rampart stands the former Eagle Cafe and Saloon, built around 1885, where musicians hung out and legendary jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden played. Upstairs was the Odd Fellows Masonic Ballroom, where the young Armstrong might have performed or heard other early jazz greats.

At 413-15 S. Rampart is the former Iroquois Theater, a vaudeville theater and later a movie house. It was built in the first decade of the 20th century. Armstrong won a talent contest there as a teenager.

At 427-31 S. Rampart, built around 1905-1915, is the former tailor shop of the Karnofsky family, Russian Jewish immigrants who became almost surrogate parents to young Armstrong. Their son Morris later opened a music store there called Morris Music, where he sold jazz records. That building also has been defaced with graffiti.

At the Poydras Street end of the block, 445-49 S. Rampart, is the onetime home of the Little Gem Saloon, which featured live music. It was built around 1889.

The New Orleans Jazz Restoration Society, led by Bob Ice and Bob McIntyre, has sought to buy the former Iroquois Theater and Karnofsky store from their owner, the Meraux Foundation, but has been rebuffed.

The society also has made offers for the Little Gem Saloon building, which has been placed on the list for sale at civil sheriff's auctions several times in recent months but has been withdrawn each time, most recently this week.

The old Eagle Saloon building is controlled by the New Orleans Music Hall of Fame, led by Jerome "PopAgee" Johnson, who bought it from the Meraux Foundation in 2007, partially with city and state money, but there have been no signs of progress on creating the hall of fame he has talked about.

Even if the Ice-McIntyre group or other jazz buffs gain control of the buildings, it is uncertain how they would be redeveloped, although turning them into jazz clubs or museums has been mentioned.